Richard Florida

Megan is skeptical that cities can outlast the crisis. Crime will get worse, she fears, tax revenues will shrink, and middle class families will once again head for the 'burbs. Ta-Nehisi (and many of his commenters) say economics favors big cities, especially Gotham. Case in point: how expensive it (still) is to live in Manhattan. I side with Ta-Nehisi, especially on the question of New York City, for reasons I outlined here.As an American living in Toronto, I've… More »

In an intriguing post, Stirling Newberry suggests that Reaganism set in motion basic economic and geographic forces that have led to a "self-inflicted recession" and shaped the demise of the conservative movement. [T]he epicenters of that "Reagan Democrat" revolt are now the areas that are hardest hit by the present depression: California, the Upper Midwest, and the Sunbelt South. This is not an accident ... The only places that are doing well in the Republican… More »

Earlier this week, Cornell mathematician Steven Strogatz reprised George Zipf's famous power law for the size distribution of cities where "the population of a city is, to a good approximation, inversely proportional to its rank." Tim Gulden of George Mason University has used data based on satellite images of the world at night to provide a Zipfian analysis for the 1000 largest urban agglomerations globally, based on several different measures of city size… More »

"American draft dodgers in Canada were far outnumbered by the young Canadians who joined U.S. forces to fight in Vietnam." From the The illustrated History of Canada (thanks to Joe Martin for the pointer). More »

The Next American City's Josh Leon reacts to my March Atlantic essay on cities and the crisis. More »

A blogger says the issue is more class than gender. His point hit home with me. More »

The economic crisis is hitting hardest at working class jobs, and rates of male unemployment have skyrocketed. A commonly asked question is how do we retrain them for emerging job opportunities in other sectors. The Globe and Mail`s Margaret Wente suggests the problem runs a whole lot deeper than we think. The new economy (over the long term) is creating tons of service jobs in retail, customer support, and personal care. The trouble is that these jobs require… More »

This map from a new NBER study by UCLA economist Matthew Kahn and Michael Cragg of the Brattle Group (using data from Purdue's Vulcan project) shows the geography of carbon emissions by U.S. states. The study finds carbon emissions are more concentrated in poorer more conservative locations, posing significant political obstacles for policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions. More »

A real estate "frenzy" is apparently developing there, the NYT reports, as bottom feeders gobble up mass foreclosures. More »

Historically, housing prices have been about three times income, but by 2006 housing prices had soared to a high more than five times incomes. In Irvine, California, the housing price-to-income ratio soared to 8.6 by 2006. This map charts the housing-to-wage ratios for U.S. metropolitan areas in 2006, the height of the bubble. It differs from the more commonly used housing price-to-income ratio. More »

Paul Krugman reflects on the demonization of cities and the people who live in them.Basically, the accusation is that anyone with a good word for urbanism must just hate the American lifestyle.[T]he same thing is true about pro-sprawl commentary ... Conservatives really, really hate on Portland; examples here and here. Aside from the tendency to engage in factual errors, the hate seems disproportionate to the cause. But it's an aesthetic thing: conservatives… More »

Brian Frank writes: "Richard Florida points to a familiar article about 'blipsters' - 'black hipsters.' Which is funny, now that I think of it, because the original hipsters were known as 'white negroes.'" Well, almost. Norman Mailer's infamous "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster" was originally published in 1957 in Dissent. More »

More than 2,000 car dealerships across the country will be closing their doors in coming months. Planetizen - my favorite urbanist site - recently asked its readers what should be done with all that space. Here are the top five vote-getters as of May 21. More »

A new British study finds that the most pirated pop songs on the internet are those that already top the charts. Instead of giving rise to a "long tail" where small indie acts broaden their appeal online, the study found that digital technology - and music pirating - simply work to reinforce the fat head of mass appeal. More »

The great Frank Gehry speaks to Charlie Rose about his life and work. More »

MapScoll links to a series of "new and improved" maps of Big Five personality types from the expanded (Canadian) edition of my book Who's Your City?. Based on data collected by Cambridge University psychologist Jason Rentfrow and his collaborators, these new maps ignore state and national boundaries and include the U.S. and Canada. More »

Google has developed a nifty new algorithm to identify employees who are most likely to leave the company. Discoblog explains. More »

Felix Salmon points to Julia Ioffe's TNR story on Nouriel Roubini, zeroing in on the long journey back to recovery. More »

Universal Music Group, the world's largest recorded music company, is once again trying to adapt to the new world of digital music. It's created a new venture named Vevo in partnership with Google, according to the Wall Street Journal. Vevo aims to generate increased advertising revenue from streaming music videos. But the enormity of the creative destruction sweeping the industry goes far beyond the iPod killing off the CD. The Gang of Four's Dave Allen argues… More »

Over the past week, I've discussed the role of class in economic performance, innovation, and entrepreneurship. But what about happiness? There is considerable debate over the happiness of nations. The Easterlin paradox suggests that there is little or no relationship between a country's economic development and its level of happiness in comparison to others. An influential paper by economists Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson contradicts the Easterlin paradox,… More »